Nickel dimed apenglish3 summer assingment

What she was trained in was a facade instead of quality service. Foremost, Ehrenreich attacks the notion that low-wage jobs require only unskilled labor. Ehrenreich says that poverty is hard to grasp since it is typically associated with unemployment; thus, when employment is up people assume poverty is down.

It is only a few days later that she is crammed into the car with other low-income earners as they traveled to their jobs for the day. Many of the workers encountered in the book survive by living with relatives or other persons in the same position, or even in their vehicles.

Ehrenreich argues that the laws of economics do not always apply to low-wage workers because they often are restricted geographically, are fraught with the anxiety of entering a new job environment, and do not have ample information available to them. Barbara was earning percent of that.

Do you think Jesus would call for a minimum wage hike? She also details several individuals in management roles who served mainly to interfere with worker productivity, to force employees to undertake pointless tasks, and to make the entire low-wage work experience even more miserable.

Though the book is in parts vulgar and opinionated, it is an eye-opening testimony to the lives of the many people living in poverty today. When she turns to the discussion of food and housing, Ehrenreich notes that the poor cannot compete with the rich on the housing market.

When someone works for less pay than she can live on Ehrenreich is purposely exposing only one side of her argument, but keep in mind she is giving a voice to those who usually have none.

For schools who have assigned this book on the summer reading list or for an assignment during the year, consider integrating the Nickel and Dimed discussion questions that are offered below.

Chapter 3 Discussion Questions: Further, her main purpose is to show that lower class workers are unable to survive in this crushing environment. Is it really a living wage? She also posits that one low-wage job is often not enough to support one person let alone a family ; with inflating housing prices and stagnant wages, this practice increasingly becomes difficult to maintain.

Nickel and Dimed Study Guide Evaluation In this last section, Ehrenreich evaluates her performance as a low-wage employee and her success at obtaining food and shelter. How to they argue against them?

Ehrenreich describes personality testsquestionnaires designed to weed out incompatible potential employees, and urine drug tests, increasingly common in the low wage market, arguing that they deter potential applicants and violate liberties while having little tangible positive effect on work performance.

How much is it today? One woman was so very sick that she could hardly stand, yet she had to complete her job in order to feed her family. Ehrenreich presents an entrepreneurial society that is dependent on greed in the upper echelons of business.Nickel and Dimed Study Guide Evaluation.

In this last section, Ehrenreich evaluates her performance as a low-wage employee and her success at obtaining food and shelter. Overall, she thinks she did well as a worker and insists that no job is truly “unskilled.” She gives herself a B or B+.

Nickel and Dimed. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed was selected as the summer reading book for A conservative student group objected to the book’s selection, suggesting University administrators were pushing a liberal point of view and labeling the book a “Marxist rant.”.

Nickel and Dimed is the revealing, compelling, and widely acclaimed result of that decision-a book that has already become a masterpiece of undercover reportage, and a portrait-of-the-working-poor classic that is showing up in /5().

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America is a book written by Barbara Ehrenreich. Written from her perspective as an undercover journalist, it sets out to investigate the impact of the welfare reform act on the working poor in the United States. The events related in the book took place between spring and summer.

Ehrenreich, who has a dozen books behind her dealing with the social and political hallmarks of our economic system, has here, with ''Nickel and Dimed,'' followed in an honored journalistic tradition and written a valuable and illuminating book.

The most unsettling aspect of Barbara Ehrenreich’s eye-opening foray into the world of the working poor is that the situation hasn’t improved.